Lynne ThermannJUNKIE–OVERTURE WITH REPETITIONAfter 40 years of drug use and addiction, this is an attempt to examine what remains. I examine my own body similarly; I strive to hear what it tells me, in its own way. Both my past and my physicality often seem apart from me, yet the only way to hear them speak is to grant myself attention. After a lifetime of neglect, this gives birth to new language…. * picture a coat with no one in it. all the damp little waiting rooms. shoe-trails in the floor dust. the overdose: someone disappears. descends into blood-hewn cave. returning weightless to emptiness mother-heaven-nirvana / where pleasure is irrelevant. go back again / we were all there before. * breath 1 - 2: our tears on return. retrieval was a brutal mistake. torn from the irresistible void the weeping child / tears of what? collapsing sheath renewed. the absolute didn't close us in. grasping thrown rope: the disability not in the action but in remorse. a fretful infant of superior force. * haunted shadows in mouth & eyes. wasted time: irretrievable & soul-sick with mother-lust. what draws us back again again? what one retrieves one can't bring back. leaving the breath behind. become the homeless sheath. empty coat nailed to doorframe. fading flower in material folds. * black. earth. shade. the tearful beast folding its raw body closed: the self and the will it holds. not disabled by forgetting but disabled by remembering. disabled not by falling but by rising. prone form with spilled breath hand stretched out open leaf. sievelike will drawn to deeper earth. the red cave: womb without terror. * disability is not in non-desire but in desire. not in stillness but in activity. waking to tragedy. plead rend. world of nothing safe. beg red mother for succor: empty without you / full without you. awakened in wind that drives the wheel eternally. * Or, again: wake in wind with quiet rituals: croon over candle. mix with dropper. slide needle in. syringe blood thrust like blooming. shut the bright world outside. removing the shades, the traces, memory of self. forget we were ever there. sleep brutal wind. now fall easily asleep. * peace unto these : the less peaceful gone blind. hearts burst with quiet grief. before dreaming: the warmest womb.
without thinking, sleep. mud-colored worm in mud. the quiet berth. * somehow sleepwalking: the ghost the shadow that moves inside sheath coat: that is 'me' or 'not me' but what is that? the crippling fact: not that one finds nirvana but that one seeks it. pretends permanence while breathing. impermanent being forgets & still wants permanent nirvana. some dawn in an open sky. the red mother still. the tired bawling. * what am i? what i know: waiting while dropping silent waiting while moving desperately. falling silent to permanent hollow syringe metal cooker little rituals with alcohol glassine cotton. rubber cords the element of water. * the disability is in emerging from silence. like a baby in mother's breath. to do anything. want anything: the crippling fact. the scramble to be a body at home in the body. the essential body. which is the idea of sunrise. the idea of choking fit. so much superior for being not-being. serenity fairly secure. * addiction to life to action is the accident. not the addict's tiny drops of things pathetic bags. filth and scum. my own scum my own filth in your face. not my face. drop bloody cotton. hospital tourniquet. quivering pointed sharp. the color: brown candy / wet dung. mud water. * crippling fact: not the submersion but breaking the surface. long borne extinction-seed tired mortal coil shape / sheath / determination. color! action! blast of crimson fluid. the most dangerous passage in birthing: clear the passageways. or choke on air like fish. same shock of recognition after long misuse: bloody stump of cord. babycry eyes like twin clouds in milk. seeping sepsis lack of spine corporeal sand. spring bloom. shining metal clamps. embody now for the half-blind mother-state. * free floating desire can attach to many things like heart root & teeming cinders. desperate as wind on bleaching leather. skin-shed secret tears. warm breath of feeling / warm breath of non-feeling fused in secret blood. point dot the X tie up rope/ hit vein. let the tie go. beware flaming cells. push plunger down. who cares if my skin is a bubble? if I fall from my fleshy sheath like dung. shoot milk / bleach / dirt / cum / filth. fluid existence become fluid depth. * - 1 - 2 - hold your breath & may turn blue. turn into void like a summer day.1 breath 2 - don't be here at all. become smoke ash or tree limb shaker. move through a shadow blind to your nature. relax it's just the wind shaking the sails of your being tree. gone here & not gone yet. gone the tortured not gone yet: joining with what they will become. ghosts in the fleeting skin. windy coat breathing 'occupant'. * when i meet you i resist you: drifting beast / haunted shadow. pit death blood in dust his emotive silence. the corpse in a corner chair cradling notepad. patterns of droppings scratches notes. the blood caught in fallen skin bright like red cherry. blood red talons bending for shadow's shift. mystery leaf afloat on wind of womb: a quiet ember out like a light. led out by my feet to the coroner. empty coat nailed to doorframe: peeking dolly. * what is there when you go away. who is there when you're not left standing. what binds your breathing to this world: red corner red flowers wind whispering centers dark as ashen shadow.
|